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Saturday, February 28, 2015

Getting Ready To Go

Hiya! I'm Yamila Abraham, but you can call me Milly. I'm writing this post from my small home in Pahrump Nevada, but parked in my front yard is my REAL home--my huge-butt travel trailer!!

My mom and I have finally set the date for our escape: March 15th!!

We were waiting to sell our house. We had a very hopeful showing and it looks like this is finally happening. Even if it's not--we're out of here! We've booked a very nice RV park in town for one month, then we'll be heading west.

The reason we're staying local is to finish up the escrow and all that, but also it's because we're going to treat our RV like a weight-loss spa for our first month on the road. This park has the most AMAZING fitness center. My mom and I are going to pretend we're at the expensive weight-loss spa that we really wanted to go to. Only the food for our meal-plan will be in the trailer and we'll work out twice every day!

We're both overweight right now. We want our RVing to be the start of a healthier lifestyle for both of us. I had a bone tumor in my knee that laid me up for months. I put on 50 pounds and I'm really depressed over it! We're going to jump-start our weight-loss this first month and then keep it up so we can both be healthier for this adventure.

We'll post pictures of us after we've lost some weight!!

Our other life goal is to live debt free. We have two debts that the sale of the house is going to wipe clean, one of which is the cost of the RV. It will be great to get rid of these two monthly payments!

Of course, we're also getting rid of our electric bill. On Tuesday I'm getting my solar panels installed on the RV. I'll watch the installer carefully and take lots of pictures so I can have a descriptive solar page for everyone to check out. We plan to do some boondocking while we're on the road!

Being debt free and reducing expenses is important for me because I pay all the bills. My income fluctuates from month to month. I don't have the security net of a steady paycheck. It's not easy living on your writing income. That's what I do, and part of making this successful is being frugal.

Frugality has given me my freedom!

So, let me introduce everyone:

Milly, Your Humble Author. I'm young for the full-time RVing life. I'm the one who will do all the driving, hitching, hooking-up, tearing down, navigating, and so forth.

Maria, The Mom. She retired early by moving in with her daughter (me). We both had health problems and needed to take care of each other. She's handicapped so we modified the RV to help her out. I think she'll do just fine.

Sultan, the Gat. We call our cats gats (gahts). It's short for gato. Some Spanish is spoken in my home since my mom is Puerto Rican. Anyway, Sultan is a 15 year old male short-hair cat with black and white fur. He's my oldest baby, but is still pretty spry. He has only one eye because he was attacked by a coyote when we lived in Massachusetts. Grrr...stinking coyotes!! Sultan is a very smart and social kitty. He walks on a leash without having ever been trained. He knows a lot of verbal commands and is incredibly affectionate. He's the only one of our kitties who loves to be picked up and snuggled. He's my boy! He's next to me right now!

Scrappy, the Gatita. Gatita is Spanish for small female cat. Scrappy is our youngest kitty at 8 years old. She's a long haired grey tabby with a touch of tortie and extra toes. Scrappy is the whiniest kitty you've ever met! She has the greatest vocabulary out of all our cats. Scrappy is my mom's kitty and calls her 'mama.' She insists on sleeping draped over my mother's hip every night. If my mom is late for bed she sits in her doorway and HOWLS! Scrappy also demands that you give her a rub-down every time she eats. I know...it's insane. She will sit in front of her bowl and mewl until someone starts rubbing her. She annoys the heck out of us, but we love her dearly!

Precious, the Scaredy-Cat. Precious is a 9 year old female short-hair tortie. Precious is one of those cats who's scared of her own shadow. If you get up, you must be getting up to kill her. She runs and hides, often screaming a meow as she goes. She has to be coaxed out of her hiding places to be fed. If someone visits she'll be hiding the whole day. She's gotten better over the years, but she's still a scaredy-cat at heart. Strangely, though, she travels the best out of all our cats.

We got rid of most of our stuff already in a massive Labor day weekend yard sale. The house is being sold furnished to a woman moving back to the USA after living in Mexico. She didn't want the expense of lugging up all her stuff, so our house is ideal.

Moving into the RV should go pretty smoothly. I know we have a lot more stuff to get rid of that we reaccumulated. This RV is actually our second one. We started with a small KZ Sportsman trailer and decided we just couldn't live full time in it. We traded our truck, which could only pull 5,500 pounds, to an SUV that could pull 9,000 pounds. This allowed us to also upgrade to a bigger RV.

I wanted to go small. Even to a Class-B van! Towing is so stressful, and I can not back up an RV to save my life! I've got a secret weapon to help me though. More on that in a future post!